


my soul has a home (& it's your heart)

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17876711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Jemma finds the notion of someone completing her pretty silly. That is, of course, until she meets Fitz.





	my soul has a home (& it's your heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LibbyWeasley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibbyWeasley/gifts).



Jemma Simmons had spent her childhood years certain she would meet her soulmate early on, simply because her soulmark seemed like something no adult would just blurt out without so much as an introduction. Crawling along just above her hip were her words: _Wow, you’re pretty._

She didn’t know what she thought of the words themselves, really, because that could be a little shallow, she supposed. But she got enough compliments for her cleverness anyway so she also thought it might be nice, to be thought of as the pretty one for a change.

Whatever the case, by the time she made it to the SHIELD Academy she figured she might meet her soulmate at a party, intoxication as likely as childlike innocence to produce those first words. It didn’t matter all that much; she had more important things to focus on than when and where she’d meet her soulmate, like classwork.

She arrived early to secure a good seat but now felt a little silly for being there so soon. The few other people that had begun to show up milled about near the door or took spots in the last row. Jemma arranged her notebooks and markers for the fourth time just to have something to do, glancing up occasionally to see what her classmates were up to.

When she looked up again, a young man was almost right in front of her, wrapped up in scribbling something into the margins of his book and not looking where he was going.

She cleared her throat a little, just to keep him from running into something.

He glanced at her briefly, turning back to his book and then did a double take, saying something she didn’t catch.

“Excuse me?” Jemma smiled up at him. He looked about her age. Perhaps another person far too young to be here? Perhaps someone she might befriend? He blushed a little, and she tried again.“Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said?”

“Uhm.” He closed his book, his cheeks still glowing.“That seat.” He gestured vaguely next to her.“Is it taken?”

“No, please, sit!” She pushed her neatly stacked books a little further to the side to give him room, holding out her hand.“Jemma Simmons. Biochem.”

“Fitz,”he said simply, taking her hand.“Engineering.”

His smile was a bit uncertain, his hand was warm and soft, pressure just right as if he’d practiced it. Or maybe she just thought that because she had definitely practiced her own handshake.

* * *

Jemma had never liked the narrative around soulmates being your ‘other half’, the implication that one wasn’t already a whole person not sitting right with her. But knowing Fitz, she kind of got what people were trying to say, even if the whole soulmate thing wasn’t a factor in their relationship. They fit together like puzzle pieces, as cliché as that sounded.

She still thought there should be a different metaphor, something that made clear that they were already great by themselves, and just somehow improved each other. He wasn’t her other half, per se. But he was the pesto aioli to her prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich, so to speak.

She chuckled to herself at the train of thought. It was a good thing she was studying Biochem, because she would have failed miserably as an English major with that attempt at poetry.

“What’s so funny?”Fitz asked, pausing the lecture they were listening to.

Jemma propped herself up to look at him.“Nothing, just thinking about soulmates.”

“Oh, yes, a classically comical subject, that.”

“Well, it is all a little absurd at the very least,”Jemma said, then frowned. They’d never landed on this topic before. They’d been studying together, falling asleep in each other’s beds, going to parties and sharing sips of drinks they were too young for, talking about everything under the sun - and yet soulmates had never come up.“Do you - do you have a soulmate?”

“Yeah,”Fitz said.“Haven’t met yet, as far as I know.”

“As far as you know?”she probed. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you could miss, she thought.

He shrugged.“My words aren’t exactly unique. I’d have to rely on them to tell me if I said the right thing.”

He sounded rather worried at the prospect, as if anyone would be stupid enough not to want this wonderful man as their soulmate.

“Of course they’d tell,”Jemma said.

He smiled but a little sadly. Before she could ask what was wrong, he already spoke again.“Want to take a nap? No point in the lecture if you’re not really listening.”

“A nap sounds great,”she replied, settling back down with her head on his chest.

He flicked off the light on his bedside table before he put his arm around her.

Jemma tried not to think about how his hand was almost on top of those words that were trying to tell her that there was someone more perfect for her than Fitz out there.

* * *

“So wait,”Skye said, balancing her chair on two legs as she looked at Jemma over the top of her cup.“You have a soulmate and you’re telling me it’s not Fitz?”

“You’re not listening.” Jemma scowled at her friend, who was deliberately derailing after she’d been the one to bring up soulmates in the first place.“My point is that soulmates aren’t rare, or might not be. Soulmarks are rare but that alone doesn’t really allow us to extrapolate anything about soulmates as such. If you don’t meet your whole lives, you cannot speak first words so you -”

“Right, super interesting and all,”Skye interrupted.“How the hell isn’t Fitz your soulmate? You guys are basically… I dunno, made for each other?”

“Well, apparently we’re not,”Jemma returned, a little icier than intended. The more she’d gotten to know Fitz, the more she’d been irked by the words on her hip. Not that she really gave much on the idea of a destined mate. It was just – well, if there was someone who allegedly completed her, it could at least have been Fitz, couldn’t it?

Skye let her chair fall back down onto all four legs with a thud, her smile rather bashful. She hadn’t missed that she’d touched a nerve.“Well, I guess that just goes to show the universe doesn’t have all the answers.”

Jemma chuckled.“I suppose it doesn’t.”

* * *

After years of falling asleep listening to Fitz’s heartbeat, falling into bed with him in a different way should perhaps not come as a surprise, not when she’d wondered all too often how his lips would taste, or how his fingers would feel tangled in her hair, or how perfect it would be to fall asleep with nothing but the sheets against their skin.

She still had to refrain from pinching herself as he kissed his way down her throat, her chest, her belly, taking his time and making her squirm.

Then suddenly Fitz froze, his fingers brushing across the words on her skin. When he looked at her, his eyes were as wide as if he’d seen a ghost.“Those are your words?”

“Yes,”Jemma said, hearing the defiance in her voice but unable to keep it out. The words were one of the very few things she’d never shared with Fitz. They were a little too silly for her liking.“What’s wrong? You already knew I had a soulmate.”

“Yes – I just – I didn’t realise -”

He broke off, shrugging off his unbuttoned shirt and gesturing to the letters across his ribcage.

Jemma looked at them, frowning.“Well, those really are unfortunate. I’m sure you’ve heard them a lot. But the first thing you said to me was you asking whether the seat was free, so it’s really a coincidence that I said the right thing to you.”

She tried not to be disappointed about just how close the universe had been to getting it right.

“That’s not what I said.” A blush was creeping up his neck.“Originally. I hadn’t asked about the seat. I was stuck in my notes and it kind of slipped out, and then I was too embarrassed to repeat it.”

Jemma let that sink in for a moment. Then she jabbed her finger at her soulmark.“That’s the first thing you said to me?”

“Not exactly smooth, I know.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.“But you must admit, you are very pretty.”

“There’s not even a ‘very’ in the mark,”Jemma teased, and then kissed Fitz senseless.

Her best friend, her partner, _her soulmate._

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, love!💗


End file.
